Professional poker player Vanessa Rousso has won yet another Big Brother 17Head of Household competition, and is guaranteed a spot in this season’s Top Four following Sunday night’s CBS telecast.

Rousso nominated John McGuire and Steve Moses for elimination.

This means that Lady Maverick is one step closer to the $500,000 first place prize and becoming a mainstream reality show superstar.

However, to do so, she will need to survive a crucial Final Four process in which she will not be able to compete for HOH. She will be forced to rely on other houseguests or a Power of Veto win to secure her place in the Final Three.

Big Brother 17 Live Feed Spoilers

In a fateful twist, John McGuire won the Final Five Power of Veto competition and decided to save himself from Tuesday’s eviction.

As a result, Vanessa was forced to put up another houseguest up on the block alongside Steve. In the end, she decided to backdoor professional wrestler Austin Matelson — which means either Steve or Austin will be eliminated in fifth place.

Live feeds show that Rousso is actually gunning for Austin this week, but that Johnny Mac has actually switched alliances and is considering voting to evict Steve. If that happens, Lady Maverick would not get to cast a deciding vote since Liz Nolan is likely to also vote for a Steve Moses eviction.

Back To Back Evictions on CBS Tuesday and Wednesday

With only five houseguests remaining, Big Brother will go into overdrive this week and air an eviction on consecutive nights, starting this Tuesday at 8:00pm Eastern Time.

Live feeds will be down for most of the next three days, as Big Brother 17 winds down its production schedule in preparation for its season finale.

Professional sports — the NFL regular season, the MLB pennant races and the PGA’s FedEx cup — typically take over United States television programming during the months of September and October.

CBS Executive Moonves Unhappy with BB 17 Casting

In a somewhat shocking admission during a recent interview with Vulture, CBS Chairman and CEO Les Moonves stated that “this wasn’t a great year for casting on Big Brother.”

Moonves’ statement made national headlines since he and his wife, Big Brother host Julie Chen, assume a lot of creative control over the Big Brother casting process.

However, some Big Brother fans argue that the show’s lackluster mid-season ratings has more to do with its format, which is much more “solvable” than its sister show, Survivor.

Casting more than a dozen strangers to live together for nearly 100 days is a somewhat hit-and-miss proposition, as can be seen by MTV’s The Real World. That show has aired since the early 1990s and has experienced massive ratings fluctuations during its tenure.

The “Fix” is In?

Rumors have swirled this week among Big Brother fans that “the fix is in” for Vanessa Rousso to win this season. A September 11 article by Earl Burton of PokerNewsDaily outlines some of the rumors, which cite an unconfirmed “Poker Face” reality show deal that Lady Maverick supposedly has in the works with CBS.

For perennial Big Brother fans, “Big Brother is rigged” accusations are nothing new, and heat up every year once the competition gets down to its final houseguests.

Disgruntled Big Brother fans are notorious for posting their displeasure on show-related forums once their favorite houseguest has been eliminated — much like poker players are prone to upload bad beat stories across the Internet.

David Huber

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David Huber has been involved in the poker industry for more than a decade: initially as a professional online poker player and later as an editor, consultant, writer, and forum manager. Known as "dhubermex" online, David's poker-related work has been heavily published across numerous websites since 2004.